


Limbo

by Cara_Loup



Series: Transitions [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Friendship/Love, M/M, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in Tatooine’s desert, Luke plans Han’s rescue from Jabba’s Palace — but Leia has different ideas.<br/>T<span class="small">RANSITIONS</span> 3: Across the gaps and unexpected twists in the known story, this series explores the changes in Han and Luke’s lives from their first encounter to the battle of Endor — and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

As always, he woke with a chill on his skin, and a white-out on the far edge of vision. The sudden burst of oxygen into his lungs rasped like sand and a biting scent ripped out a cough. Snowburn, cut breath, nowhere. Limbo.

And then, in the diffuse, minimal space between a heartbeat and the flicker of lids, it was over.

_Breathe_.

Luke pushed up on the narrow bed. Through the window slits high up in the wall, daylight slatted across a stark contrast of textures. Broken white of a sheet cleaned into threadbare softness. The knotty weave of a loose blue coverlet. And the bedframe’s foreign wood bleached to the color of bones baking in the desert. He rubbed his thumb over the furrows that ran in haphazard parallel lines. A fractured pattern emerging over time, as if an ingrained purpose had been helplessly urged to the surface.

Across the back of his left hand fell a stripe of whitening sunlight. Angled steep and scalding, it traced a disturbance in the uniform sequence of days. He’d grown used to rising with the onset of Tatooine’s dawn, his meditations and exercises complete by the time the lesser twin crawled up over the desert’s rim. An exuberant cut just above the horizon, fierce and indefinite in the quivering air. Too late to claim that impartial companionship now.

When he rose, the patterns of his own breathing flowed easy and foreign in the silence. Against the soles of his bare feet trickled sand that gathered along the length of the rug. Fittings and furniture in Ben’s house made a sparse, accidental collection, the mark of discarded lives and changed directions. Weaned from comfort and pared down to essentials. On the sandstone table lay the newly constructed lightsaber. Luke slipped the tan robe over his head and let its coarse weave settle against his skin. He touched the stubble along the side of his jaw, since there were no reflectors anywhere in the house. He drank a glass of water.

In the short shadow of the western wall, he went through his exercises until sweat tracked in runnels down his skin. Dried into salt paths while the lightsaber spun from his hands, alive, detached, deadly. Pale green against the burnished copper of the mesa, an alien color to the whole of Tatooine. And still his breaths came easy.

Luke gauged the time with a backward glance at the suns. A hand’s breadth above the horizon now, isolate ripples of energy seeking a target. Another hour to spare, and he could still reach Mos Eisley ahead of dusk.

The sonic shower he’d repaired months ago razored dead skin off his flesh, a thin layer of hours erased with a prickle like sunburn. He rubbed his upper arms, raising a shiver of resistance where the right hand clasped impersonally.

From a trunk, he retrieved the set of pants, tunic and vest that had been made for him. The black cloth ran smoothly through his fingers, robust and unexpectably sleek when he turned the tunic inside out. When he closed the fasteners, it fit like a second skin, molding his body to the clear shape of purpose.

He shut down the power generator and waited for the gauge to wind down all the way to zero. At the door, he paused for a parting glance around the room, unrevealing and humble, a refuge imprinted with long stretches of waiting. Compact silence echoed the man who’d lived here before him.

_Liar_. Words turning over in his mind, a slow revolution that never stopped. The door’s spring locks settled into place with sharp clicks.

He’d arrived with a carryall containing spare clothes and some technical manuals, and that was all he took back with him.

* * *

Dust fumed low over the salt pan when he left his X-wing and started out on foot. Between the dunes sat the carbon-scored fighter like a lost transient, wings glistening forlorn in the sun. Beside it remained an empty stretch of flaky silt and blowsand, roughly the size of a landing platform. Artoo twittered apprehensively.

Midday glared across the mineral lake that lay dry and white under a mocking illusion of water. The rest of the way would take several hours, extending through occasional detours for Artoo’s sake, to spare his sensitive servos an abrasive intrusion of sand.

Later on, they passed the canyon where they’d stopped off the first time, to appraise Mos Eisley from afar. The suns painted it orange and vermilion, and the light fell in ribbons across defiant crags. Ben Kenobi’s ghost guarded this place like so many others, the beginning of a journey carved into coppered rock.

While the light sank, Luke moved effortlessly through the run of hours, in the self-sufficient quiet that governed the flats. Silent wind brushed its barely perceptible rhythms with ripple patterns into the sand.

The desert possessed qualities he’d never appreciated from the narrow perspective of laborious moisture-farming. Like the way it anchored emptiness and embodied infinity in its breathing vastness. Minuscule flows of air and sand shaped and caressed the shifting skin of the desert; motion without purpose, potential without direction, yet constantly expanding. Once he’d understood that much, it wasn’t so hard to imagine how Ben had lived out his years on the outer rim of civilization.

Occasional flitters stung the quiet now, trawling business into Mos Eisley with the grating whine of their sand-clogged engines. On the fringes of the settlement, Luke wrapped his cloak closer, blending himself to the lazy bustle of pedestrians, the universal browns and bluish grays of interchangeable lives. Grit-encrusted walls leaned into the streets, the stored heat of day mingling with sour body odors and the heavy smell of dung from a dewback corral. Stifling, just as the Force was stifled with the white noise of self-absorbed minds.

He detached, scaling cooler heights to look on from a distance. Locating himself among the mindless activities, nondescript in his dusty cloak. And while he stayed strictly on course, like a droid on an errand, the locals kept out of his path. Even when he reached the crowded market streets, ground traffic shifted around him and left gaps like eddies.

From his drawn inner shields, Luke extended careful probes into the rampage of energies. If he wanted to, he could pinpoint Lando’s presence in moments, by the seeping tension alone. They’d rendezvoused several times, passing each other in the trackless maze of Mos Eisley for a quick trade of codewords and, sometimes, hand-written messages. Even on crumpled papyr slips, Lando’s script sprawled and challenged the narrow margins. But now, more extensive discussion had become inevitable. Time was shrinking rapidly towards their ultimate objective, and with nightfall, Leia would join them.

Out of nowhere, warning intruded like a tap on his shoulder. Luke jolted back into his body, his left hand deep in his pocket and his fingers wrapped in the frayed papyr strip.

Lando’s last message read: _Clear skies for stage 2. 2+1 meeting in 5, standard locale, R 106_. But that wasn’t what had alerted him.

The Weequay group swaggered around a corner, long rifles over their shoulders, their craggy faces predicting an outburst of violence. Several Talz vendors skittered aside; fear of Jabba’s notorious henchmen thickened around them like an unclean smell. As the Weequays drew closer, Luke reached into the wind, swirled a column of dust from the street that obscured him and threw grit into their leathery faces. But the finer sand grains spun in slow motion, and within that strange haze, he could see their deaths. Each of them falling headlong ―

There, he’d passed the three, and the sand collapsed back into a formless mass. Behind him, the Weequays cursed, knuckling dirt out of their eyes.

Luke released the message slip in his pocket and thrust the phantom image aside. One more intuition that he couldn’t trust.

Dusk swamped the lane he’d turned into with alternating streaks of deep shadow and gaudy illumination. At its end sprawled _Hadija’s Parlor_ , one of the upscale establishments in town. An unlikely location for conspiratorial meetings, since Jabba’s retainers were regular guests ― yet here, on their home turf, they were bound to look for diversions, not trouble.

The doors were wreathed in neon garlands and guarded against dusk by a pair of tall Vargash. Luke slowed his pace. Accessing and clouding their minds was as easy as rousing the sand had been. A flick of intent turned him into a slipping illusion, insubstantial like the shadow that lay against the entrance. Ben had excelled at such sleight of hand, and there was no reason why his student should flinch from emulating him.

Wafts of smoke and heavy perfume enfolded him when he entered the lounge where a mixed clientele appraised the line-up of potential company for the evening. Following Lando’s instructions, Luke headed straight for the staircase. The rooms on the first and second level were rented out by the hour and provided questionable privacy for a variety of entertainments. In one of those rooms, Lando would be waiting for him.

On the first landing, a slender Twi’lek leaned decoratively against a pillar, a gauze of dress exposing vulnerable curves of skin. As Luke passed, one slim hand glided lazily down his arm and caught around the right wrist with a playful tug.

Before he could check the impulse, he whipped the hand away with a gesture that painted shock across the thin face. Luke took a deep breath and projected apology. “I do not wish to be touched.”

After the long time of disuse, his voice had a hoarse edge.

“Pity,” the Twi’lek purred, appeased enough to seduce again.

The blend of fragrances grew heavier in the corridor, an imperfect screen for the smells of sex and exhaustion that crawled stickily on Luke’s skin. He counted down the doors on the right and was relieved to find the air more breathable inside.

Velvet draperies spilled around the large bed that took up the room’s center and pooled in crimson on the floor. Lando slouched in a chair by the window, a pose that was pure camouflage.

With a nod for greeting, Luke closed the door and unfastened his cloak. An alert glance swept him, took in his black array and caught briefly on the lightsaber.

“How long’ve you been here?” Luke asked.

“Only a couple of minutes.” Lando’s tone was casual, but his hands spoke a different idiom, indicating the desktop com unit and atmosphere controls set into the wall above the bed.

Luke signaled understanding with a quick gesture. In establishments of this kind, surveillance devices were a likely supplement, either for security purposes or convenient blackmail. He stepped over to the bed and inspected the ornate cover plate, blending ambience controls into the room’s nostalgic design.

“What a day,” Lando sighed, launching idle conversation to cover their efforts. He bent over the com unit. “The blasted heat’s getting worse all the time.”

“And the hot season has only just begun.”

Thick bolts held the cover plate rigid in its place, and there was no removing them without the help of a ‘spanner. Luke rolled back his sleeve and flipped the panel below the right wrist open to adjust the hand’s leverage.

He worked in silence, while Lando babbled on about the hardships of life on Tatooine and searched the rest of the room. With a faint screech, the bolts popped out of their sockets. Somewhere at his back, Lando’s pacing stopped abruptly, but the wiring behind the cover plate looked perfectly harmless.

“No bugs,” Luke said after he’d made sure that no traces of his manipulations remained. He reached into the cavity below the wrist to nudge the settings back into standard position.

“Good.” A sudden pressure in Lando’s tone betrayed his studied neutrality.

Luke glanced down at the hand, the thing that wouldn’t age. “Impressive piece of bionic engineering, isn’t it? Far more adaptable than anything organic can ever be.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Two long strides took Lando back to his post by the window. “We’re safe now,” he announced a little too loudly. “The walls are sound-proof.”

“That’s a relief.”

Leia wouldn’t want to witness any of the business that went on in the adjoining bedrooms.

Reclined into the prodigal chair, Lando stretched his legs, retrieving a look of unconcern. “You know, we can strike any time now.” He slid a hand through the curtain’s folds. “That company from Nar Beeda is finally on the way home. Still got a nasty bunch of bounty hunters around, but the place feels almost empty by comparison. And Jabba’s grown pretty sluggish from all those snacking sessions.”

“Yes, it’s time.” Luke listened after his own words, such a callous understatement.

From the far wall, air conditioning hissed softly, laboring to suck the heat out of the room. But below the fragrant additives, he discerned something else, abrasive and out of place.

“What is this... smell?”

Lando wrinkled his nose. “You mean, the perfume?”

Luke shook his head and moved to the nearest window, but Lando stopped him with a raised hand. “Forget it. The windows won’t open. Can’t have anyone ditching the bill.”

“I see.” The smell entered his lungs with a cold sting, and he had to level out his breathing. Beyond the window, the outlines of domes and power stations fell away into night.

Luke reached for the water pitcher on the table and poured himself a glass. They would wait now.

But it seemed that Lando couldn’t tolerate any prolonged stretch of silence. He leaned forward, one hand plucking at the pale fabric of his pants. “Luke. You know I didn’t have a choice.”

Familiar terrain, and it had been covered months ago, before Lando was cleared for the trip to Tatooine. A one-sided conversation in the sterility of sickbay.

“I had several thousand people to think of,” Lando argued. “Vader would’ve taken over anyway, whether I played along or not. I figured I’d be more useful alive and in control of the security teams.”

“Yes, I know that.”

A soft rap on the door intervened before the defensive reasoning could circle back around. A signal twice repeated. Luke slipped to the door and waved at the sensor panel.

“Leia.”

A shawl rustled off her braids, and a smile spilled forth, past the telltale stress lines. She embraced him swiftly, clasping the right hand in hers. Fingertips stroked thoughtfully along the palm while she studied him. Luke held himself still under her scrutiny.

Gestures like these had become frequent only in the aftermath of Bespin. Although he knew perfectly well that her touch wasn’t meant for him, he obliged a mutual, helpless pretense of comfort.

“What have you been doing all this time?” A vertical slant between Leia’s brows revealed that she wasn’t pleased with the look of him.

“I’ve trained and prepared myself. And I made this.” Luke glanced down at the lightsaber, a fetching glint against black cloth. He remembered her kiss on his mouth, suddenly, a fleeting brush with reality through a fever haze.

Leia’s features had grown sharp over the past months, added discipline and pressure lending her a new luminosity as every softness melted off cheekbones and jawline. She was certainly more beautiful now than when they’d first met, her vibrant will trapped in the frost of waiting. Her presence brought a private shimmer to Lando’s eyes. Luke observed that reaction with perfect dispassion, abruptly aware of its lack in himself.

“How is―?” Leia broke off in mid-question, her gaze aimed unsparingly at Lando.

“No status change. I take a look at the life indicators every chance I get.” Hesitation tightened the corners of Lando’s mouth.

“But?” Leia prompted.

“Those readings cover only the basic body functions. There’s no telling what kind of other damage―” Lando gestured angrily and let his hand drop against his thigh with a slap.

“Nothing’s changed,” Luke said. “Nothing.”

Silence seeped in like vacuum through a hull breach. He didn’t tell them how he knew, and they didn’t ask.

With a long, thoughtful glance for him, Leia eased into a chair, impatience leashed in her posture. They couldn’t risk extending their meeting with secondary matters. And with every moment they squandered ―

Luke took a deep breath. “Threepio’s with you?”

“Aboard my shuttle,” Leia confirmed.

“Good. Artoo’s keeping watch outside.” He straightened. “I’ll have to instruct them both later.”

“Wait, wait...” Leia’s narrow smile disappeared as swiftly as it had come. “We need to review your plan.”

“They’ll be my gift to Jabba,” Luke explained. “The two of them will serve as decoys.”

“And you’re sure that’s a good idea? You know Threepio. If something goes wrong, he might let something slip.” She sighed expressively. “He’s so very easily flustered.”

“That’s why we won’t tell him anything. Artoo can be trusted to take charge, but if I sent him alone, Jabba might suspect something. He has no real need for astromechs.”

“But he can use a protocol droid,” Lando inserted. “His interpreter was disintegrated a while ago.”

Leia contemplated her clasped hands. “Yes, that’s bound to be more convincing. Then what?”

“Artoo will carry my lightsaber, so that I can go in unarmed,” Luke answered. “I still intend to bargain with Jabba, even if―”

A flurry of footsteps exploded in the corridor, and through the door filtered an altercation in distorted billows of sound.

“What if they don’t admit you?” Leia asked in a lowered voice. “Do you really think that such a gift will make Jabba more inclined to listen to you?”

“I hope so. But if not, there are other ways for me to gain access.” Luke abridged that part with a curt gesture.

“But what if Jabba isn’t impressed?” Leia insisted. “What can you offer that will intrigue him enough to consider a bargain?”

The noise had faltered outside, only a sullen shuffling of footsteps now.

“Myself,” Luke said. “I’ll propose an exchange of hostages.”

Leia shook her head emphatically. “He’ll never go for that!”

In private, Luke had to admit that she was probably right. “Alternatively, I can offer to provide the kind of entertainment he won’t be able to resist.”

“And what would that be?” Her eyes narrowed.

Luke moved closer to the window again. He could hear the restless sand, gathering up in the night wind. “A fight against Jabba’s champion of choice. He’ll be free to select someone he thinks I can’t possibly beat. The betting profits are bound to be considerable, and Jabba enjoys that kind of bloody sport.”

His choice of words whipped Leia’s head up. “I don’t like it,” she said sharply. “And in exchange you’re planning to ask for―”

“Yes.” From the window, a cool breath touched the nape of Luke’s neck, soothing in the room’s cloyed atmosphere. He stilled against it, and the words shaped in the restricted space between his body and the sandglass pane. “Whether I win or lose. I’ll make it a condition that Han is... released first, so that I can make sure he’s okay. By the time the fight begins, he’ll have recovered somewhat.” Welcome coolness prickled on his skin and focused between his shoulder blades. Paced his breathing. “That part should appeal to Jabba. Having Han watch while his minions rip me to shreds.”

He owed Han his life, they both knew that. But this time objections came from an unsuspected angle.

“There’s something else, Luke.” Lando shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Jabba’s keeping a pet rancor somewhere in his dungeons. What if he chooses that creature as his champion?”

Luke closed his eyes. “The Force is with me. There is nothing it can’t overcome.”

When he looked up, the tight set of Leia’s mouth yielded no hint of agreement to his plan. “Let’s just say Jabba accepts... How can you possibly trust him to keep his end of the bargain?”

“I can turn this fight into a spectacle that will draw their minds off anything else.” Luke let as much urgency slip into his voice as he dared. “Chewie will be waiting outside with an escape vehicle, Lando’s going to hustle Han out and cover for their getaway. There’ll only be a few Gamorreans on watch ― they won’t expect an attack from inside the palace. If there’s any trouble, Artoo is smart enough to create a diversion.”

“And Threepio’s bound to get in everyone’s way without even meaning to,” Lando added.

Brought out into the open, the plan they’d patched together flaunted brazen hazards, but it was workable, the best they’d been able to devise in a morass of uncertain factors. Almost real.

After a strained pause, Leia shook her head.

When Luke took a short step towards her, a disconcerting shadow moved with him. His stray glance caught on a wall-length reflector, shining between the cascading tapestries. The glacial surface trapped him pale and black in a crimson tide. Stalled by the crystalline image he didn’t recognize, he said nothing.

“Your plan doesn’t include any escape route for yourself,” Leia pointed out.

And it was true, but whatever he could improvise on the spot would fail to convince her. The tacit alarm in her eyes told him as much.

“Luke... I want in. I can’t just sit here and wait.” She straightened, her spine drawn rigid in defense. “I’ve thought about it and made some plans of my own.”

“It’s too dangerous, Leia.” For once, Luke found himself in total accord with Lando who leaned fervently across the side table, rattling the pitcher and glasses.

“Princess...” Predictable charm flickered past his agitation, and Lando started over with a smile. “Leia. Your spirit’s admirable, but if you’d lived in Jabba’s den like I have, you’d think twice about entering the place. Jabba’s got a thing for slaves. Preferably human. Preferably female. And his idea of entertainment...”

“When I get there, I’ll no longer be recognizable as either,” Leia interrupted, prepared for everything. “I suppose you’ve heard of Boussh the bounty hunter?”

“Yeah, I think his name got mentioned once or twice,” Lando admitted uneasily.

“He’s dead, but the circumstances of his demise are not important now. What matters is that we’ve obtained his outfit.” Leia played her cards with practiced skill. “Boussh was of slight stature, and forced to wear a composite mask-helmet at all times, in order to breathe on worlds like Tatooine.”

The conclusion to her account hovered in the middle of the room, ready to be seized.

“You’re planning to pose as Boussh,” Luke said.

“The fact that he’s a known bounty hunter won’t automatically gain you access to Jabba’s inner circle,” Lando cautioned.

Leia’s smile flashed with a grim kind of satisfaction. “It will, if the bounty hunter brings a prize Jabba has coveted for a long time.”

“You mean, Chewie?” In search of support, dark brown eyes swerved in Luke’s direction.

“Yes. Boussh’s outfit provides me with the perfect camouflage, and if Chewbacca is willing to play along―”

“If you use Chewie as bait,” Luke said, “he’s going to be locked up somewhere, if nothing worse.”

“And that’ll leave you to your own devices.” Lando’s comprehensive gesture indicated the scope of her risk.

“Well, you’ll be around too,” Leia reminded him tersely. “Besides, Artoo can pick any lock in seconds. He’ll set Chewie free as soon as everyone’s asleep, while I take care of Han.” Her glance swung around to Luke, demanding answers. “If I’m not back by morning, you can still put your plan in motion.”

Inconsequentially, he noticed the fragile line of her throat, the fast pulse beating there. “Leia, don’t.”

“You don’t understand,” she said with a soft, strangled urgency that resonated oddly in the pit of his stomach. “It has to be me. I was the last he saw before―”

_Before_. The word hung between them like a reproach, even though Leia hadn’t intended it that way, and started a fine, dangerous crack in the structures of reasonable argument.

Luke let out a thin breath. Defeated. “All right.”

There was mutiny in Lando’s eyes as he threw up a hand and let it drop just as angrily. “I think that’s taking unnecessary risks. Just for the record.”

The conditioning unit wheezed softly, oscillating the air of this small, stifled universe. Luke’s fingers locked around the window-sill. He could still smell that disruptive, scathing scent ― and it was too familiar.

He had to concentrate. Adjust the disjointed plan.

“You’ll have to contact Chewie... He’s monitored Jabba’s activities through the spaceport grapevine.” Staying out of sight had been hard for Chewbacca, a conscious self-entrapment that strained his patience. “He was supposed to fly the Falcon out to the western Dune Sea,” Luke continued, “but there won’t be time for that now. I’ll do it.”

“Thanks.” Leia swept to her feet and tucked the shawl around her neck. “But how will you get to Jabba’s palace?”

He shrugged. “On foot.”

“Then we’re all set, huh?” Annoyance bristled through Lando’s tone and quietened when he looked at Leia. “How soon can you be there?”

“Tomorrow night,” she answered. A smile tore loose with dangerous suddenness, staunched emotion behind it.

Luke turned aside. “I’ll see you out. Lando...”

“If you turn right and right again at the bottom of the stairs,” Lando’s voice said at his back, “there’s a side exit you can use. Good luck.”

 

Between curls of fragmented music, a fitful breeze shot through the narrow back street, piling sand drifts against dormant houses. They stopped on the next corner, in a barren pocket of quiet. While he told Leia how to get in touch with Chewbacca, Luke sensed the storm that gathered far out in the desert. Its crackle and power where it rallied the sand.

When his attention returned to Leia, her glance wavered, tracking past the frayed seams of his cloak.

“Did it have to be black?” She took the edge off it with a touch to his arm, transient warmth passing through the cloth. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I wish I could have come more often. You look better―” And her voice grew troubled with uncompromising candor, “―better adjusted. But still...”

“It’s okay,” Luke stopped her. “I needed time to myself, to put things back in perspective.”

Perhaps he should have known that Leia wouldn’t let such a vague statement pass. “I wonder...” She pulled up her shoulders. “Do you realize how many potential casualties your plan involved? Not to mention the degree of destruction, the risk to yourself. You’re not invulnerable, Luke.”

“I’m more aware of it than you know.”

Apprehensions ran like electric current on his skin ― and he had to give it one more try, even if he had no right ― the fingers that squeezed hers stressing each word.

“Leia, think about what you’re doing. He’s going to need help.” No reliable medication for hibernation sickness existed, and regular stimulants could easily overtax, even damage the nervous system. “With the Force, I could―”

“No, Luke.” He’d gripped too hard, and Leia withdrew her hand with a barely suppressed wince. “I don’t think I can explain it any better, but there are some things...” She trailed off with a sorrowful smile.

“Don’t pity me.”

Her glance fell away, as if from a near collision. “I wish you wouldn’t think that. Take care of yourself.”

And after this brusque change of plans, she left him with little else to do.

* * *

Isolate silhouettes swayed out of the night as Luke approached the hive of large docking bays. A muted roar of engines shivered in the air, and freighter crews were idling back and forth between the bays and the taverns. Above each portal gleamed a red surveillance eye.

Long moments after Luke had pushed the buzzer, the berth’s owner bustled out of his repair shop, grouchy and inclined to squabble over extra charges.

“You’ll receive the rent you’re due,” Luke told him, “nothing more.” Edgy anticipation had crept into his tone, subverting his command.

The man eyed him suspiciously. “What’s the hurry? And where’s the Wookiee anyway?”

A pile of credits in the palm of Luke’s hand focused scattered lighting into a hypnotic flash.

“You do not need to know.”

And now, back in command, he threaded the words through the man’s poor defenses, building persuasive echoes. Blunt fingers flicked along the stack of newly minted coins. The portals unsealed at last, rumbling with an edge of thunder that spread through the ground.

Under a circular patch of sky sat the Millennium Falcon, lightless and waiting. Luke’s pace quickened as he crossed towards her. He recalled the codes that shut down her alarm systems with tremendous ease.

The ramp fell open towards him, unclosing a path into gentle shadows. In the corridor, the stale scents of missing ventilation greeted him, laced with a whiff of coolant. He trailed his left hand along the bulkhead, each segment accounting for past travels. Circling inside a ring of looped time that left him with a strange shortness of breath when he stopped at the cockpit’s entrance.

_it’s been so long_

Minimal lighting spilled over the flight console where all the instruments would waken at a touch. Phantoms of sound and movement hovered amid the metallic grays, melting over each other in wave after wave of recollection. From it swelled impatience that rose fast towards anger.

_careful_

He shoved both hands into his pockets, arresting himself. Cool leather cajoled his touch, the black gloves slippery between his fingers.

_my father in me_

A metallic taste collected at the back of his throat, and he swallowed it aside.

While Artoo escorted Threepio to this berth, he’d run the routine checks and the pre-flight cycle. Then he would meditate. He could do this. He brought Leia’s smile back into focus, the one she’d flung at Lando with such vehemence. Tomorrow night.

_time_  
 _distance_  
 _matters not_

Luke eased into the flight chair that recalled the imprint of another body, the armrest under his elbow canted slightly to the right. Tomorrow.

And then time would set in again. Purpose, time, passion, in close alignment. Converging to collide somewhere in the nearer future.

He ran his fingers along the flight console, marking roughened spots where the plasticoating had been worn off the metal. Where his hand sheltered the traces of another’s touch.

And it would be so easy now, to conjure the memories. Sparks of irreverent humor flashing from hazel eyes, all the strength and spirit behind that casual front. All the warmth in Han’s lowered voice, during their last moments on Hoth. Just before ―

With a hard twist of will, Luke severed the link with the past. Like dry twigs snapping between his fingers. Unsteady heartbeats crowded into his throat.

From the open hatch, a wanton draft made its path through the ship, seeped the caustic smell that stalked him and chafed bitter in his lungs. Vivid like obsession. He recognized it now. The stench of carbonite that wound in and out of his dreams, cast chills across his skin and robbed him of breath. Repeating itself in fractured visuals.

_a body crashing to the floor_  
 _cut breath_  
 _struggling_ ―

Every night. Every single night in the past six months, he’d dropped into a pit of dreams that were not dreams ―

Luke seized his hand into a fist.

Too late now. The melting process had already set in, in the hollow beneath his breastbone, and wouldn’t stop until it reached the core.

He squeezed his eyes shut. His breaths were too loud in the confines of the cockpit.

But somewhere across the Dune Sea  
where a storm twisted without purpose ―  
he found a faint lifesense, a desperate claim pulsing  
terribly slow ―  
Not breathing.  
...  
Han.

* * * * *

**Author's Note:**

> First published in ELUSIVE LOVER 5, 2001.


End file.
